Australian photographers make the top spots in Frank Hurley Photography Awards

With a prize pool totalling more than AUD $30,000, the winners of the Frank Hurley Photography Awards have just been announced.

A number of Australian photographers have been recognised as winning entrants in the international competition, but the title of Overall Winner has been awarded to photographer Jason Gulley from Florida in the United States. 

Gulley’s winning photograph is titled Cenote Angelina Cloud and was captured on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

As overall winner, Gulley takes home an all-expenses-paid Antarctic expedition cruise from Chimu Adventures, as well as other prizes valued at approximately AUD $20,000.

As for the category winners, aside from Gulley, who is the Portrait of adventure category winner, all the other category winners are Australians: Nature and wildlife went to Andrew Dickman from South Australia; Polar has been won by David Sinclair from Hobart, Tasmania; Scenic has gone to Will Eades from Port Macquarie, New South Wales; and Composition has been won by Benjamin Maze from Peakhurst, New South Wales.  

Created to celebrate photography that honours the spirit of Francis (Frank) Hurley, who is thought to be the pioneer of Australian Antarctic photography, the Awards seek to showcase photographs that celebrate nature, scenery, adventure and the incredible beauty of the polar regions.

The competition has been put together by the Mawson’s Huts Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that will use the money raised by the Awards to help with the ongoing conservation of Mawson’s Huts in Cape Denison and East Antarctica, where the Australian explorer Sir Douglas Mawson was stationed between 1911-1914 while he led the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. 

Only in its first year, the competition has already garnered widespread international attention, having received more than thousand entries from twenty-six countries from across the globe.   

The Awards are set to be held every alternate year to the Australian Antarctic Festival in Hobart, which also hosts a competition that focuses on polar photography.

You can see the other finalists’ entries online here or in person at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The works are on showcase now, with the exhibition set to run at the gallery until the end of February, 2021.